ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish official warned on Thursday that if the new Iraqi army is being taught to consider the Kurdistan Region as a security threat, it will leave no room to differentiate between the present Iraqi army and the Iraqi army under the former Iraqi dictator who committed genocide against the Kurdish people.
Saadi Ahmad Pira, a senior party official of the ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), made the remarks as he outlined the issue of the much-anticipated Kurdish referendum on independence, and raising the Kurdistan flag in the contested city of Kirkuk in March.
Pira said that the Kurdistan Region does not have “legal” problems regarding holding the referendum as the claimed the international law allows it without the approval of any external party, but rather there are “problems” with the neighbouring countries including Turkey and Iran who have already opposed Erbil’s efforts in doing so.
Pira made reference to the Kurdish Peshmerga who waged decades-long armed struggle against the former Iraqi governments, including against the former Baathist regime, much of it staged from the mountainous regions of Kurdistan.
“If the future Iraqi army is to be indoctrinated that there is a threat in the mountains of Kurdistan that threatens Iraq...then the difference between the present and former [Iraqi soldiers] is that the former ones did not say their prayers, while the present ones do say their prayers,” Pira noted, quoting a Kurdish official who drew the analogy between the present Iraqi government and the former regime.
The Iraqi government has been ruled by a Shiite Muslim-majority government since the fall of the former dictator Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion in 2003, therefore Iraq is now perceived to be more religious than that of the Baathist regime which was believed to be a secular pan-Arab nationalist government.
Kurdish independence referendum does not need outside permission
Commenting on the Kurdish referendum on independence to be held in 2017 despite Baghdad’s objection, and Tehran and Ankara, Pira said that it is an “essential and legitimate” process, and that the Kurdistan Region does not use the referendum for political achievements or to exert pressure.
He said the row over raising the Kurdistan flag in Kirkuk — a disputed area claimed both by Baghdad and Erbil in accordance to the Iraqi constitution — shows that Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran are in denial of the Kurdish right to self-determination.
Raising the Kurdistan flag “was a difficult test for Baghdad that they don’t stand the truth that the Kurds have the right to self-determination and that the Kurds have their own flag,” Pira said.
The head of the Shiite Alliance, Ammar al-Hakim, whose coalitions holds the position of the Iraqi Prime Minister, said in an interview in late April that the Kurds can choose which way they take, the example of South Sudan which received international recognition because it sought the consent of the central government, or Turkish Cyprus, which lacks any recognition, adding that Baghdad is not ready at this stage to give go ahead to the referendum citing internal problems in Iraq and the objection of Iraq’s neighbors.
“...Cyprus itself went with a unilateral decision, and [as the result] we do not see anyone recognizing it except Turkey," Hakim said, "That is why we believe that if the Kurdistan Region wanted to transform to a state without the consent of Baghdad or a decision from all of the Iraqis, it will see a condition of declined recognition in its legitimacy afterwards, and will face many problems. Iraq is not ready to embrace a step like this."
Hakim said that an independent Kurdistan will create a “political tsunami” whose waves will be felt across the entire region and no country except Israel will recognize it if declared today.
Pira said today that Kurdistan does not need to seek permission from any external party, without naming Baghdad.
“From the international law perspective, I think the referendum does not need the permission from anyone,” Pira claimed. “The problems we have are not legal, but political. The problem is of neighboring countries and that of the environment in which we live.”
Pira told a gathering of the PUK’s supporters in early April that both Ankara and Tehran threatened Erbil after the Kurdish-led local government in Kirkuk raised the Kurdistan flag alongside the Iraqi one over state buildings.
It was these threats, Pira elaborated, along with “illogical and unexpected” messages coming out of Baghdad, that compelled the two main ruling parties, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Kurdistan to meet and decide on holding a referendum on independence.
“We received a strong message from Turkey, threatening us,” Pira explained, saying the threat was made in the days following a majority vote from the Kirkuk Provincial Council to raise the Kurdistan flag. “We received a message from Iran, strongly threatening us.”
Iran has a strong influence over the Shiite-led Iraqi government while the Kurdistan Region has maintained strong ties with Turkey.
Turkey’s President Recep tayyip Erdogan threatened Erbil, saying that the good ties between his government and the Kurdish region may suffer if the flag of Kurdistan remained on top of the state buildings.
The Kirkuk officials responded that it is impossible to lower the flag.
Baghdad always treated Kurds as ‘second-class citizens’
Pira said that they have received three different projects from the Iraqi political parties earlier in the year aimed at resolving many of the challenges facing Iraq in face of the war against the ISIS militants that began since 2014, and the future of Iraq after the defeat of ISIS in the country which is now in its final stages.
The three projects are from the Shiite National Alliance which also includes Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s party, the Sadr Movement led by the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni factions.
Pira said they are now working out an official response to each of these projects proposed to the Kurdish parties. But, he noted, we are going to tell them in the preface that the Iraqi constitution already has all of these points but remained unimplemented.
Pira asked: How can the Kurdish parties any longer believe in these projects while all the Iraqi parties failed to make the people of Kurdistan feel like they are first-class citizens for the last 13 years?
“We should tell our brothers in Baghdad, the Sunni and Shiite forces that we haven’t felt we have been equal citizens ever since the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921 to date,” Pira said, chronicling different Iraqi governments — royal and republican — each treating the Kurds as “second-class citizens”.
He said the Kurds helped the Shiites and the Sunnis in their fight against the Saddam regime during his more than three-decade-long rule. But as soon as they assumed the power, they started to forget all of that.
Commenting on new initiatives especially from the Shiite parties that call for ruling Iraq by the majority vote of the parliament, Pira repeated the long-held Kurdish stance that a majority government is against the new foundation of Iraq.
“The new Iraq, Iraq after Saddam, without consensus, and without balance, cannot be governed,” Pira said, saying that the former Kurdish Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, seen by Kurds and Arabs as a mediator, has always stated so.
Pira concluded that Baghdad did not consult the Kurds when it formed the mainly-Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi forces in 2014 when ISIS overran large parts of Iraq, when the Iraqi government decided to cut the Kurdistan Region’s share of the budget beginning in early 2014 under the rule of the former Shiite Prime Minister Nouril al-Maliki over Kurdistan’s independent export of oil, or when it formed the so-called Tigris Operation under the command of the Iraqi army that threatened to use force against the Kurdish forces in 2012.
Maliki created the Tigris Operations Command, locally called the Dijla forces, and deployed them “to maintain security” in the provinces of Diyala and Kirkuk, his move was blasted by the Kurdish government, which deployed its own Peshmerga forces south of Kirkuk to counter the new force.
